Qualla: Coatbridge https://qualla.com/coatbridge en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/j/coatbridge-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Coatbridge https://qualla.com/coatbridge Coatbridge: Introduction https://qualla.com/coatbridge/ Photo credit Jayhoolihan, Public domain. In 1936 Coatbridge was the most overcrowded place in Scotland. A photograph in George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier shows a row of homes in the town's Rosehall area - cramped, sooted, indistinguishable from the worst housing he found in the English mining towns. The iron industry that had made Coatbridge had been gutted two years earlier when the local Union Plant relocated en masse to Corby in Northamptonshire. The shipyards on the Clyde, which still bought iron when they could, would collapse in their turn after the war. Eighty-five percent of the town's homes would eventually become council houses. This is what an Industrial Revolution looks like when it ends.

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Image: Jayhoolihan | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/j/coatbridge-wp/gcvj-coatbridge-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Coatbridge: Sitting Over a Flooded Coalfield https://qualla.com/coatbridge/ Photo credit ML5 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The Clyde Valley plan of 1949 described Coatbridge as 'situated over a flooded coalfield' - a phrase that captures the town's geography and its history at once. The flat low-lying ground 60 metres below the Slamannan plateau was perfect for siting blast furnaces and routing the M...

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Image: ML5 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/j/coatbridge-wp/gcvj-coatbridge-sitting-over-a-flooded-coalfield.mp3 0:06 2 full Coatbridge: Little Ireland https://qualla.com/coatbridge/ Photo credit Jayhoolihan, Public domain. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Coatbridge received a long succession of immigrants from Ulster, particularly from County Donegal, drawn to the furnace and pit work. The Irish presence has been so substantial that the town has been called 'little Ireland.' The Coatbridge ...

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Image: Jayhoolihan | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/j/coatbridge-wp/gcvj-coatbridge-little-ireland.mp3 0:06 3 full Coatbridge: The Gartsherrie Furnaces and Their End https://qualla.com/coatbridge/ Photo credit Andy Dingley, CC BY-SA 4.0. William Baird's Gartsherrie Works was for decades one of the largest ironworks in Britain - and the last of them in Coatbridge. Its blast furnaces shut in 1967, ending an industry the town had defined and been defined by for more than a century. The 1934 exodus to Corby had been ...

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Image: Andy Dingley | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/j/coatbridge-wp/gcvj-coatbridge-the-gartsherrie-furnaces-and-their-end.mp3 0:06 4 full Coatbridge: Bands, Comics and Boxers https://qualla.com/coatbridge/ Photo credit Iain Thompson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Coatbridge's cultural output is wildly out of proportion to its population. Mark Millar, the comic book writer behind Wanted and Kick-Ass, grew up here; both his comics became Hollywood films. Thomas McAleese (stage name Dean Ford) of The Marmalade had a UK number one in 1969 wit...

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Image: Iain Thompson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/j/coatbridge-wp/gcvj-coatbridge-bands-comics-and-boxers.mp3 0:06 5 full